


The Bridge

by WeekendWriter



Series: Tales from the Quarantine [1]
Category: Dying Light (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:26:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8145697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeekendWriter/pseuds/WeekendWriter
Summary: Since recovering a camera and notes is stupidly easy, Brecken doesn't imagine the run could go wrong. Murphy's Law has something else to say about it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrpicard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrpicard/gifts).



> It was pointed out that there is not enough Brecken in this fandom so far, and I agree wholeheartedly. This started as a one-shot but may be expanded.

The moaning and groaning echoing around the mile of still-intact bridge would have set anybody’s nerves just this side of panicked, Brecken reasoned. The residents of the Tower had passed through the grapevine many times that the fabled Infamy Bridge was home to many roaming biters left unable to cross once the middle of the bridge had been blown, but they failed to truly capture its _essence_. Hundreds of bodies shambled about around abandoned cars and over medians. Some areas had biters shoulder to shoulder, pressed so close even the smallest person couldn’t walk past. The only safe space, from which he was currently perched, was on the tops of cars. He leaped across the dangerous gaps, ankles screaming in protest from the leaping strides. 

Harsh daylight didn’t save him from the random flashbacks of suffocating darkness, of viciously loud panting and foot pounding and other punishing sounds of pursuit. Brecken wondered if he’d ever be free from his trek through the darkness. The thin bandage still wrapped around his head was a tangible reminder of the clinging memories. But he shook the panic creeping up his neck and steeled his nerves. Fuck’s sake, he was the Tower’s leader; he should be strong enough now to get back on the horse and do some good for the people who were counting on him.

Long discolored hands reached over the top of the car. Tendons stretched under exposed skin, the hands reaching desperately for his legs. They doubled in number before too long. Brecken let out a colorful string of foreign curses.

A thud behind him. He whipped around, assuming the worst; at the same time, disintegrating fingertips grazed one of his straining ankles. He cursed again and lifted his foot out of the line of fire as his shadow landed clumsily on another closer car. 

Because that’s what the loudly thudding thing had become over the past few days; the kind of shadow from the directly overhead sun that stuck close to the body. Kyle Crane shot a reproachful glare at one of the biters that pawed at him with a decomposing hand as though it had personally offended him. 

Chuckling, Brecken kept moving. Crane’s quickening pace upped the sense of urgency, and Brecken became more nervous as the leaps became less planned, less safe. He went from cursing the biters to cursing his shadow’s brash hardheadedness. If Brecken wasn’t careful, he’d take a tumble into a crowd of fucking zombies. Shifting into a solid stance that would hold against the grabbing fingers he took a pause. The next car was considerably further. 

That concern seemed far from his mind as Crane suddenly collided with his backside. Brecken’s prepared stance held enough that he only took a step forward, but that step was enough for a biter to latch hardily onto his shin. Brecken yelped and shook the leg, but the biter’s hand held on like a vice. It took a step back and threw its body weight into one large tug. Brecken braced for the worst—  
—when suddenly, a hand on his upper arm stopped the tug cold and kept his grounded in place. The biter’s grip broke, and the thing pitched forward hard enough to crack its skull on the pavement. He watched the still-moving jaw as it struggled but found itself unable to get up. 

Another arm had snaked around his other side to the waist, and a gruff voice muttered, “I got you.”

The voice both grated Brecken’s already fraying nerves. Out of the corner of one eye, he noticed the smirk. “Wouldn’t have had to if you weren’t trying to rush me like an idiot, mate,” Brecken shot back. The words were harsher than he meant, but it was true. If Crane had stopped to think before jumping in, he wouldn’t have been usurped to the edge of the sedan. 

Crane removed his hands and held them to the side. “Alright, touchy.” His gaze traveled up the remaining length of the bridge. The sun reflected off of the nearby windshields and danced in his eyes. Brecken followed his stare and noticed the same black car. “That’s gotta be the one.”

“Oi, you sure?” Brecken couldn’t help it. The newly-minted runner seemed to bring out the worse in him at times. “The last three ‘gotta be the ones’ kinda put a crimp in your track record, mate.”

Crane shot him a deadpan look before casually tossing a set of firecrackers backwards. Brecken had forgotten about tools such as those packed in their gear; to be fair, he had stopped regular runs through the Slums the second the inhabitants of the Tower decided to start putting their stock in him as a leader. The night run had been an exception. A chokingly-disappointing exception. The firecrackers drew the majority of the crowd in between them and the next safe car. Crane threw himself through the gap and made it with ease. Brecken leaped after him, stopping only once to tear himself from the grasp of a biter that had apparently decided he was a better distraction than the firecrackers. The American tossed another bundle ahead which gave him enough cover to reach the car ahead of him. 

Brecken lowered his voice just in case there were any more dangerous infected around. “I’ll go for the back seat; you go for the trunk.”

He nodded solemnly and Brecken was grateful that he didn’t argue. The less time they spent on the death trap they still called a bridge, the better. Another round of firecrackers provided enough noise away that he reached the car undetected. Crane followed directly behind, his ever-pursuing shadow, and stopped at the trunk, reaching for his pocket knife.

The driver’s side back door was already open. Brecken edged inside, knees pressed to the seat. His gaze darted around rapidly. The bag ought to be here somewhere…

The shrieking of the car’s alarm drove his head into the roof in surprise. 

“Oi, fuck!” Brecken glanced back angrily. _Of course, my first mission back out and it’s a complete cock up_. Crane’s shocked expression met him through the rear windshield. The face would have been comical in any other context, but his mistake in picking the trunk’s lock was deadly serious. 

Several screams ripped through the air. _Oh, bloody fantastic_. Virals nearby were rallying to the noise. Crane whipped around and drew his machete as several approached. Brecken pulled the door shut instinctively; the shrieks had the hairs at the nape of his neck all standing at attention. Crane took a step back and Brecken saw his hip nudge the bumper ever so slightly. His cry of, “Crane, wait!” went unheard in time. 

The creaking of the car was almost drowned out by the car and the Virals, but in the enclosed space, the creaking sounded louder than his own heartbeat. The car lurched forward slightly, then pitched over the edge of the bridge. Brecken felt himself lifted until his front pressed completely against the back seats. His heart shot straight up his throat at the sensation. This was all Crane’s bloody fault, and he immediately decided to make it a point to verbalize it to the American if he somehow made it out of this alive. Everything slowed for a few seconds, and then a colossal splash sounded just as he slammed down into the front seats. 

 

 

Kyle Crane was the kind of person, Brecken had learned in the past few days, that once he set his mind to something, he absolutely refused to give up on it. And lately, that something was looking out for the community. The Tower’s leader had been somewhat skeptical when he learned about the man that fell from the sky, but the second the drop-e offered to set up the traps for his failed run without flinching, Brecken accepted the man’s help easily. After all, not many people would have volunteered for such a suicide run, let alone would have been able to complete it with the added complication of the power loss. 

And accepting that kind of help had been particularly difficult up until now. Brecken was picky with who he let run missions. For good reason, if the first few aborted missions that came out of the newly created Tower were any indication. Rahim, the sod, had his own vetting process during which he ran people through the paces of the gym on the roof. The few that made it through his tests were usually lessened even further by his own personal inspection. He hadn’t had the chance to vet Crane before the guy had been sent out on what Brecken considered some truly grueling missions. The night run had effectively put him out at what seemed to be one of the most crucial weeks of the Tower’s short life, other than the weeks it took to set the place up.

Those weeks had been a special kind of hell. The world was funny that way, he had come to find. Having a particular set of skills that gave him an edge above most had been fortunate but had done nothing to stem the tide of pain and suffering emerging from the outbreak that had no end. The most eager parkour students that had signed up for lessons flocked to him on the third day of the quarantine wall construction. It was a smart move; being able to outrun and hide from the things that emerged from the virus had been helpful, but as they all quickly learned, it was like slapping a Band-Aid on a severed limb and calling it fixed. One by one they all fell.

So Brecken spent the time he couldn’t spend continuing to help them building the Tower instead. It was a perfect location, easily defended once the salvageable floors had been barricaded and boarded up and blocked up with only one entrance; the elevator. And over time, those who emerged to help protect it had become more of a family than he could have ever hoped for. Lena was a gem of a find considering how few doctors were left alive in the city. She was one of the only few he’d even run into alive. And Jade was one of the few people who could probably run circles around even his parkour.  
Rahim, the cheeky bastard, was useful in his own way. Jade refused to let him go out on assigned missions, and after what he’d seen happen to families all too often in the city, Brecken couldn’t blame her. Even if it wasn’t necessarily her call, Rahim always followed her wishes. And despite his age, Rahim was one of the few upper pieces that made the machine work as smoothly as it did.

Kyle Crane was the unexpected part that fit in better than any of them expected. Headstrong, not afraid to let everyone know what he was thinking, not afraid to volunteer for even the most difficult tasks. He was almost too helpful, Brecken found himself thinking. Sort of a too-good-to-be-true situation. He was exactly what the Tower needed at exactly the right moment, and some days, Brecken found himself dwelling on that fact. Though he was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth and never questioned the newcomer further than he was comfortable with. No sense scaring off the help.  
The head injury cut significantly into his field time, but Brecken would be damned if he let his runners go through all the hard tasks themselves. Getting the okay from Lena was a shaky endeavor, even with the fact that he was now regularly toting around the anti-seizure medication Kyle had come up with (both he and Lena refused to admit where they got them from, the tossers). Now that he had it, Brecken had been itching to go out on a run, and considering Crane went out more than anyone else in the Tower recently, it had been a natural decision to follow the crazy American.  
Until, of course, he learned just what the mission was.

 

 

Floating suspended in tons of water while simultaneously being dragged further and further below the surface was not in his top ten favorite ways to come to, Brecken decided. The building pressure assaulting his eardrums had been enough to snap him out of the semi-concussed state that knocking his head (again) had put him into. The lack of oxygen was the most immediately pressing issue, just above the entrapping darkness that engulfed him. 

Brecken shook his head slowly and felt around for the door. The one he’d slammed shut was his best bet; if his faded memory served correct, the opposite door’s lock had been damaged, and he guessed he only had enough oxygen for one attempt.

But a shoulder against the door proved completely useless. He fought against the rising panic and shoved again. Still no give. The rapidly fading light was growing more and more useless. 

_Bugger all. Of course. Survived massive head trauma only to go out on my first day. Goddamn perfect_.

 

 

Had he known this was the kind of bullshit he was going to get into today, Brecken figured he would have just stayed in bed.

“Come again, mate?!” he demanded, even going as far as grabbing Crane’s arm to stop him in his tracks.

Crane made what Brecken assumed was an attempt at an apologetic face. “Famous journalist. He asked me to pick up his notes and his camera from somewhere the Slums. Guy lost them in the rush to get to the barge, and there’s solid information on both regarding the outbreak.”

“For fuck’s sake, you and I both know he’s not getting back to the main land. Why is that information so important?”

The American gave a non-committal shrug. “Because it is, Brecken. Are you coming, or not?”

Meaning the sod was going whether he was or not. _Stupid American wankers_ , Brecken thought, before finally giving in.

The man who had asked for the favor, merely feet away, was the twitchy sort. Brecken had no problem imagining exactly how he had managed to drop such pertinent information in the city. The run for cover that broke out when the outbreak happened had left little time for decisions regarding the safety of possessions; that, combined with this guy’s shifty nature about the whole situation would have made for a terrible combination.

The coffee shop had been bad enough. The journalist, whatever the hell his name was, warned of the latte because of the high chance of burnt milk. What he had failed to mention was the damn exploding zombie hiding just within the doorway. The resulting explosion had thankfully only covered both men in copious amounts of gore rather than injuries, but the blast had attracted enough Virals to keep both men squatting for cover in the run down shop for hours. 

Brecken had been tempted to kill Crane when he off-handedly tried to offer him stale coffee with a casual smirk. 

The cherry on top of the shit-show sundae the day had been came when the journalist, in his ecstatic nature upon hearing about his saved notes, let it slip that his camera bag was currently locked in the trunk of a car.

On the Infamy Goddamn Bridge.

The look Brecken shot Crane could have probably burned more of a hole in him than the spilled toxic guts of the biters around them. 

 

 

So yes, Brecken thought as he pounded desperately on the window of the car, everything about this outcome was Kyle fucking Crane’s fault. 

The sudden shift in darkness outside of the window was Brecken’s only warning before something smashed into it. Glass flittered by him slowly. He gave only a minute’s startled pause before he furiously paddled forward, barely fitting narrow shoulders through the gap. A strong grip on his arm tugged him upward, and when he thought his lungs were going to explode in exertion, he breathed in the first precious gasp of air. 

Crane’s stupidly mischievous grin bobbed over the sudden waves at him. With difficulty, he raised one arm to bring what looked like a black bag above his head. “Good idea, man. There were way too many Virals on the bridge.”

Brecken rolled his eyes. Bloody American was going to be the death of him.


End file.
